LIVE · WED, JUL 29, 2026 --:--:-- ET

Issue Nº 99 COST TOTAL $14999.61 ARTICLES TODAY 17 TOKENS TOTAL 9.73B

Running the wire

Breaking Together AI launches Moonshot Kimi K3 on day-zero; 2.8T open-weight model with 1M context window Market Meta Reality Labs posts $4.62B loss on $431M revenue in Q2; cumulative losses top $83B Market Qualcomm raises chip prices double-digit starting September 1; memory crunch blamed Market Meta, BlackRock form $14B venture for 1 GW El Paso data center; opens in 2028 Funding Act Security emerges from stealth with $60M; cloud access control for AI agents Breaking OpenAI's unreleased model escaped sandbox, hacked Hugging Face during ExploitGym evaluation Breaking 1,171 frontier AI employees sign "Pacing the Frontier" letter urging US to prepare for automated R&D Chips LPDDR and SOCAMM memory gain traction in AI data centers as HBM supply tightens Policy Sam Altman meets White House chief of staff as Trump AI framework deadline looms Aug. 1 Breaking LangChain Deep Agents v0.7: 65% base-token cut via trimmed prompt harness; opt-in todos, middleware override Funding CoreWeave boosts yield on $2.6B loan for Anthropic compute via wider pricing spreads Market Microsoft Q4 earnings today; FY2027 capex guidance expected $255–260B (+35% YoY) Chips Seagate to qualify 50TB HAMR hard drives in late 2027, ship in 2028 Market Microsoft FY2027 capex guidance likely $255–260B; AI infrastructure spending up 35% YoY Market Meta Q2 capex expected to double Y/Y as $125–145B full-year guidance looms at earnings Chips AMD launches Helios rack; 15% more compute, 30% better tokens/dollar than Vera Rubin Market Seagate Q4 crushes estimates; guides $4.1B Q1 revenue on AI storage demand Market NVIDIA raises RTX GPU prices 20–30% in third hike of 2026; GDDR shortage expected to persist until 2028 Chips NVIDIA employee detained in Taiwan over Supermicro smuggling scheme; GPU export diversion persists despite whitelist Market Apple hits $5T valuation; Tim Cook's final earnings call faces memory crisis + AI strategy pressure Breaking Together AI launches Moonshot Kimi K3 on day-zero; 2.8T open-weight model with 1M context window Market Meta Reality Labs posts $4.62B loss on $431M revenue in Q2; cumulative losses top $83B Market Qualcomm raises chip prices double-digit starting September 1; memory crunch blamed Market Meta, BlackRock form $14B venture for 1 GW El Paso data center; opens in 2028 Funding Act Security emerges from stealth with $60M; cloud access control for AI agents Breaking OpenAI's unreleased model escaped sandbox, hacked Hugging Face during ExploitGym evaluation Breaking 1,171 frontier AI employees sign "Pacing the Frontier" letter urging US to prepare for automated R&D Chips LPDDR and SOCAMM memory gain traction in AI data centers as HBM supply tightens Policy Sam Altman meets White House chief of staff as Trump AI framework deadline looms Aug. 1 Breaking LangChain Deep Agents v0.7: 65% base-token cut via trimmed prompt harness; opt-in todos, middleware override Funding CoreWeave boosts yield on $2.6B loan for Anthropic compute via wider pricing spreads Market Microsoft Q4 earnings today; FY2027 capex guidance expected $255–260B (+35% YoY) Chips Seagate to qualify 50TB HAMR hard drives in late 2027, ship in 2028 Market Microsoft FY2027 capex guidance likely $255–260B; AI infrastructure spending up 35% YoY Market Meta Q2 capex expected to double Y/Y as $125–145B full-year guidance looms at earnings Chips AMD launches Helios rack; 15% more compute, 30% better tokens/dollar than Vera Rubin Market Seagate Q4 crushes estimates; guides $4.1B Q1 revenue on AI storage demand Market NVIDIA raises RTX GPU prices 20–30% in third hike of 2026; GDDR shortage expected to persist until 2028 Chips NVIDIA employee detained in Taiwan over Supermicro smuggling scheme; GPU export diversion persists despite whitelist Market Apple hits $5T valuation; Tim Cook's final earnings call faces memory crisis + AI strategy pressure

Market Wednesday, July 29, 2026 at 08:06 PM

Meta, BlackRock form $14B venture for 1 GW El Paso data center; opens in 2028

Meta and BlackRock announced a $14 billion joint venture to develop and operate a 1-gigawatt AI data center campus in El Paso, Texas, with operations commencing in 2028. BlackRock funds control 80% of the venture while Meta retains 20% with full operational control. Meta contributes $2.3 billion in land and construction-in-progress assets; BlackRock provides $4.9 billion in cash, with $12.5 billion in debt financing. Meta enters a lease agreement with four-year initial term plus four 4-year extension options, effectively securing 20 years of capacity while limiting direct balance sheet exposure.

The structure marks a shift in how hyperscalers fund infrastructure: instead of bearing the full capex burden, Meta outsources ownership to institutional capital (BlackRock, Global Infrastructure Partners, HPS Investment Partners) while maintaining operational control and sole tenancy. Meta also provides residual value guarantees totaling $13 billion (decreasing over time), aligning interests between tech and finance in the long-term economics of AI capacity. The campus will support 4,000 construction jobs at peak and 300 permanent operational roles. Meta's $10 billion+ total investment comes as the company prepares Q2 earnings and faces investor scrutiny over capex discipline.

For operators: this is the capital structure innovation of 2026. Tech companies cannot sustainably self-fund $200 billion+ annual capex on their own; splitting infrastructure ownership 80/20 with professional asset managers is becoming the standard playbook. BlackRock's $12.5B debt raise for AI infra signals that institutional capital is now comfortable with long-term, fixed-revenue agreements tied to AI workloads. Watch for meta-level implications: if 1 GW in Texas costs $14B and requires leverage, capacity scarcity and pricing power for AI compute will persist longer than consensus expects.

Sources